


How to Feed Your Superhero

by poplocknsonnet



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Bad Puns, F/F, Food, M/M, Multi, competitive Kara
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-05-30 01:06:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15085670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poplocknsonnet/pseuds/poplocknsonnet
Summary: Irritated with mounting takeout bills from Game Night, a novel plan is devised to fill the vacuum of Kara’s stomach. The Super Crew start to take on National City’s various eating challenges, until things come to a head when Kara is invited to a charity contest where Supergirl is rumored to have been invited.





	How to Feed Your Superhero

**Author's Note:**

> “Squab Goals” is from The Good Place’s list of unused restaurant names, which you should check out, because they're hilarious. The show is really good too. The rest of the puns are, as far as I’m aware, my fault.
> 
> Un-beta'd, so if there's mistakes, mea culpa.

“This is ridiculous,” Maggie said, holding up the takeout receipt, “How did we spend over three hundred dollars on Chinese food? It’s not even the good stuff.”

“There are eight of us,” Winn said diplomatically, “It’s-” He stopped talking when he realized that everyone else in the room was pointedly staring at Kara.

“I ca- he- i-” Kara said, struggling to enunciate around the three potstickers that she’d tried to fit into her mouth at once, “I ha- a fas- me-abol-ism.” She swallowed. “Being a superhero takes a lot of calories, you know.”

And yeah, maybe it wasn’t fair that the four couples cycled through paying for food when Kara ate more than the rest of them put together, even including Mon-El’s Daxamite appetite, but the system hadn’t been her idea. Besides, when she and Lena brought food (okay, when Lena brought food - reporters didn’t make nearly as much as CEOs) they brought something fancy and pricey, like sushi, or food from that designer burger place that had opened up recently. And that counted for something, right?

“All I’m saying is that next time it’s our turn to buy the food for game night, I have a better plan,” Maggie said, before snatching a carton of shrimp egg foo young from under Kara’s nose.

Maggie’s plan was revealed the following Thursday. She sent a message out to the group chat asking to meet at a location down near the port. The Super Crew arrived to find Maggie and Alex waiting for them in front of their destination, a jaunty seafood restaurant called “Wanna Taco Bout It?”

“What’s this, Maggie?” Lena asked.

“It’s an eating challenge,” Maggie explained,  “They call it “Everybody Tacos.” They bring out two dozen fish tacos with all the fixings, rice, beans, chips, and guac on the side, and if you finish all of it within the hour time limit, it’s free of charge.”

“Yeah, but we’re not all big eaters,” Winn said, “This is only a really good deal for Mon-El and Kara, right?”

“I called ahead,” Maggie said, a wicked gleam in her eye, “As long as we can finish as many challenges as we have people competing, we’re fair game.”

“Won’t they get suspicious?” James asked, “If Kara, well, does her thing?”

Maggie shrugged. “They’re alien-friendly. If you’re humanoid, you’re fine, and they don’t ask too many questions.”

Kara’s eyes gleamed and she rubbed her hands together in anticipation. “This is going to be great,” she said, “Let’s go order.”

Winn and Lena declined to participate, but Mon-El, James, Lucy, Kara, and Maggie all eagerly put their names down for the Everybody Tacos. “I’ll pass,” Alex said, “I’ve got a morning meeting with J’onn, so I’ve got to be sharp.”

Maggie rolled her eyes. “I know for a fact you don’t have anything until one tomorrow,” she said, “So you’re joining us, babe.”

Alex flushed, caught out in her attempt to avoid the bevy of tacos that was coming her way. “But, the calories,” she groaned.

“It’s okay, Kara will just finish whatever we can’t eat,” Lucy said.

“Hey, what about me?” Mon-El objected, “I can eat.”

“It’s okay, babe, I believe in you,” Winn told his boyfriend. Mon-El did his best to act sullen, but perked up nonetheless.

The waitress gave their group an odd look as they placed their order - “Y’all sure?” she asked, “Six Everybody Tacos is probably forty pounds of food.”

“And the fish and chips and a swordfish steak,” Winn cut in, “We’re not participating.” He motioned to himself and to Lena.

The waitress gave them a long stare before eventually deciding they were serious. “It’s your wallet,” she said, before walking to the counter to put their order in.

By the time the food began to come out, Kara was practically vibrating with excitement. It took three waitstaff two trips to bring over all of their food and several of the plates had to be stacked on nearby tables. There was a veritable mountain of guacamole, and the chips could probably tile the restaurant that they sat in. But more than anything, everyone present had underestimated what twelve dozen - one hundred and forty four - tacos really looked like. Each taco was a double tortilla - freshly made, the restaurant claimed - upon which a large piece of battered and fried fish was covered in salsa verde, pico de gallo, slaw, and crema.

“Hold up, I need to Insta this,” Winn said, pulling out his phone.

“You’ve got an hour,” their original waitress said, amusement in her voice, “Time starts now.”

The group was off like a shot, Winn alternating between picking at his fries and documenting the gluttony that he was witness to. Lena’s favorite shot of the night was of Kara, half of a taco sticking out of her mouth as she held another in each hand, ready for more.

Lucy polished off her guac, but flagged after making it through half of her tacos. “It’s too much,” she muttered, “Go on without me.” She staggered off to the bathroom to wash the grease off her mouth.

“If you vomit, it doesn’t count!” the waitress called behind her.

“What are you going to do, smell my breath?” Lucy asked.

For all of her reluctance to join in, Alex showed no signs of slowing, even as Maggie tapped out, eight of her tacos and most of her sides left.

Eventually, James and Alex declared that they too had had enough, and it was just Mon-El and Kara remaining. Both had long finished their tacos and were shovelling rice and beans into their mouths like they hadn’t just eaten nearly fifty tacos between them. It had only been thirty-four minutes, and they still had most of their friends’ sides, as well as nearly three dozen more tacos to go.

Mon-El nearly made it all the way, but fifty-two minutes in, he gasped and leaned back from the table, clutching his belly. To his credit, Kara had slowed considerably, eating tacos in several thoughtful bites instead of cramming as much food as she could possibly manage down at a time, but there was still more than a full normal human sized meal remaining.

“You don’t have to finish, babe,” Lena said gently, placing a hand on Kara’s shoulder, “I can just pay for the tacos.”

“No, they’re really good,” Kara said, before taking an especially large bite to demonstrate her enthusiasm, “How much time do I have left?”

A huge cheer erupted as soon as Kara put the last forkful of beans into her mouth. The Crew looked up in surprise - they’d been so engrossed in Kara’s gastronomical battle that they hadn’t noticed that the entire restaurant had gathered in similar awe. “That was amazing,” their waitress said, “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

Kara shrugged. “The tacos were really, really good,” she admitted, “I wouldn’t have made it if they weren’t so delicious.”

The whole crew posed for a picture, despite Lucy’s protests that she’d hurt more than she’d helped and Lena and Winn’s insistence that they didn’t want to be associated with anything involving that many tacos. Still, in the end, the photo was rather cute, even if six out of the eight looked a little glassy-eyed from the endeavor.

“So,” Maggie said as they stumbled out of the restaurant, “Are we going to go play board games or what?”

“No way,” James said, “I’m going home and nursing this food coma.” He groaned. “I’m going to have to run so many miles to work this off. How did I get talked into this?”

Maggie laughed. “Even at the price they charged for Winn and Lena’s meals, this was the most economical game night dinner ever - there’s a mac and cheese challenge up near the precinct that we could check out next week.”

“How can you even think about more food,” Alex said, rubbing her stomach uncomfortably, “I’m not sure I’m even going to be hungry then.”

“I’m in,” Kara said happily, “I love mac and cheese.”

The next Thursday found the Super Crew revitalized and well prepared. “I haven’t eaten all day,” James said, “I’m pulling my weight this time.”

“I should have done that too,” Kara fretted, “But there were free sandwiches after my lunch meeting and they looked so good.”

This week, the challenge was at a restaurant called “Leave Some Room for Mac and Cheese-us,” a name that Winn had cackled at appreciatively. The rules were much the same as the last week’s, Maggie explained, except that instead of two dozen fish tacos and a mountain of sides, they had to make their way through a gallon and a half of macaroni and cheese, along with a rack of ribs for “added variety.”

“Who measures pasta in gallons,” Lena asked with a shudder, “That’s never a good sign.”

Lucy declined to enter this time, joining Winn and Lena in ordering off of the normal menu. “I would,” she promised, “I just don’t like mac and cheese that much.”

The Super Crew placed their orders, nodding resolutely when the waiter questioned if they really wanted five orders of the Cheese-us Take the Meal. “It’s kind of a gross amount of pasta,” he said, “Not that I’m supposed to say that.”

“They’re not subtle at all,” Alex said, shaking her head, as the five challenge orders were eventually (finally, according to Kara) brought out in what could only be described as a trough, with the ribs gently draped over a veritable mountain of cheesy carbs. Kara and Mon-El finished nearly two thirds of the food between them, while Maggie, Alex, and James just managed to put away the rest.

Winn cackled as he showed off some of the pictures that he’d taken over the course of the meal and uploaded to Instagram - Alex and Maggie gagging at the full trough, Lucy posing daintily with her grilled cheese sandwich alongside the deluge of cheesy pasta, Kara with cheese sauce smeared across her cheeks, forehead, even her hair, a stack of rib bones nearly a foot high, their final bill which came out to under forty dollars.

They took the next week off, but the week after that found the Crew at “Squab Goals” participating in the three rotisserie chicken challenge called “A Bird in the Hand and Two More On Your Plate.”

From there, the eating challenges became an infrequent but regular part of the Super Crew activity rotation; they made it to about one per month, moving away from their normal game night slot to the weekends as they had to travel further and further to find new challenges.

Mon-El, Maggie, and Kara participated in every challenge, accompanied by James and Lucy when they liked what was served, as well as Alex, when Maggie could wheedle her into it. Winn sat each one out, preferring to document the experience for his social media feeds, and Lena joined in only when the challenge wasn’t volume, like the time they tried to eat Satan’s Nosehair, the attractively named super spicy ramen noodles that came with rubber gloves and a safety release form, or the one that involved shelling two dozen crabs, a feat that Lena claimed took more finesse than stomach space.

All in all, despite the few pounds that James put on that Lucy claimed to love and Mon-El’s bruised ego at never managing to eat quite as much as Kara, the eating challenges were a great bonding experience and definitely easier on the wallet than buying Kara takeout. It did, however, very nearly lead to disaster in one memorable case.

“You guys,” Winn said, bursting into Kara and Lena’s apartment, “We have a problem.”

“Is it my mother?” Lena asked, standing quickly.

“Is it the Waverider?” Alex asked, pulling a sidearm out of her bag.

“No,” Winn said, “It’s- You know how I’ve been posting all of our, well, Kara’s eating challenges on Instagram? Well, she’s been invited to a contest for charity; they’re donating fifteen thousand dollars to local food banks for every entrant who can eat one hundred and fifty potstickers.”

“That doesn’t sound like a disaster,” James said, “I mean, it’s a little weird that they don’t just donate the food, I guess, but I’ve heard of weirder publicity stunts.”

“No, no, you don’t get it,” Winn wailed, “They say that they’ve invited Supergirl, too.”

“Well, she doesn’t have to go, right?” Alex asked.

“I want to!” Kara said, “It’s for a good cause!”

“So you can just go as Supergirl,” Alex argued, “And no one will be the wiser.”

“They invited me publicly!” Kara said stubbornly, “I don’t want to look like someone who doesn’t care about food banks. And besides, how suspicious would it be if Supergirl showed up and I didn’t? Everyone knows how much I like potstickers.”

“Well, what’s your solution?” Alex asked, “You can’t exactly be in two places at once, and I’m not sure even you can eat three hundred potstickers. That’s so many potstickers.”

Kara smiled. “It’s okay, I have a plan.”

A phone call later, Kara had explained the details of the contest and the events leading up to it to a very bemused J’onn.

“Well,” J’onn eventually allowed, “It’s for a good cause and we need to protect your identity. And I do like potstickers.”

The day of the charity challenge arrived and although they weren’t participating (“I could eat those potstickers!” Mon-El said dejectedly, garnering sympathetic pats on the shoulder from his boyfriend) the whole Super Crew came out to support their two entrants, sporting T-shirts that, embarrassingly, had Kara’s face printed on them. J’onn was a little uncomfortable with the attention that “Supergirl” was receiving from the crowd that had gathered to watch, but did his best to project the same sunny charm that was so characteristic of the hero.

There were ten other competitors, a mixture of professional challenge eaters (“I can’t believe that’s a thing,” Lucy said, “Of course that’s a thing) and amateurs like Kara who had made a splash in the local challenge-eating scene. “Supergirl” was the only superhero present, although Kara felt that Kal would have been there in a shot if he’d been invited. The contest-runners had been up all night preparing by hand the nearly two-thousand pot stickers required and had spent multiple hours and an amount of oil that Alex shuddered to think about frying them all up. The food, along with various dipping sauces and pitchers of water, were lined up in neat piles in front of twelve seats.

The local news had arrived; Kara felt a little odd that there was a CatCo team filming the event, but it was a big fundraiser and if Winn’s ballooning popularity on Instagram was any indication, people loved to watch the kind of gluttony that they were about to engage in.

It wasn’t too long before the competition began. The organizers were almost ruthlessly efficient and the challenge started exactly when it was advertised to. The twelve competitors took their seats, each behind their own mountain of fried dough and meat and waited for the signal to start. Kara was close to the middle, while “Supergirl” was at one of the edges. They’d been careful to sit apart, so as not to invite any side-by-side comparisons of their faces. Eventually, a bell rang, and a timer started counting upwards on a big screen that had been rolled out. It was time to eat.

The crowd’s energy was electric as the twelve eaters began to dive into their food. Kara could vaguely make out her friends’ voices; Winn in particular had a very distinctive “whoo!” She couldn’t help but smile around the mouthful of fried pastry - the potstickers were delicious. That is, potstickers generally were, but these were exceptional. It was a shame that she was eating them for a contest, because she didn’t have the time to savor them. On the other hand, she didn’t usually savor food, and there were one hundred and fifty of them.

Kara methodically made her way through her pile; the past few months of eating challenges had taught her how to set and maintain a pace throughout a meal. It might have been the training, or it might have just been the fact that it was a potsticker challenge, but Kara was, of course, the first to finish her potstickers, swallowing her last while second place had an even sixteen remaining. “Supergirl,” meanwhile, was having a little bit of trouble. She’d slowed down and was rubbing her belly uncomfortably with almost a third of her pile left in front of her.

The crowd cheered as Kara stood up and raised her arms in the air, doing her best Rocky impression. The lead organizer waved her onto the miniature stage that they’d set up where she presented Kara with a potsticker-shaped trophy and ceremonially signed an enormous check for fifteen thousand dollars. “Thanks for coming out,” she said, “If you’re ever hungry again, we’re opening a place on Chapel and Main soon.”

“I’ll check it out!” Kara said, exhilarated and bubbly with the thrill of victory and the energy of the place, still raucous as the crowd cheered on the rest of the eaters. She walked off the podium, intending to find her friends and her girlfriend, when she was stopped by a teenaged girl with a video camera.

“I’m María Veracruz,” she said, sticking out the hand that wasn’t balancing the camera on her shoulder, “I’m a media intern with CatCo.”

“Oh,” Kara said, shaking the girl’s hand, “I work there as well.”

“That’s great!” María said, smiling widely, “I was hoping I could have a few words about the contest?”

“Sure!” Kara said, “It’s kind of weird being on this side of the story.”

María laughed brightly. “Don’t worry, it’s just a short video for the local news part of the website made by a summer intern. Plenty of time to work up to bigger and better things.” She switched on the camera and pulled a microphone out of a pouch at her waist.

“I’m with Kara Danvers, who’s just won the first Potstickers Against Hunger challenge, besting a wide field of competitors, including National City’s very own Supergirl. Kara, do you want to comment on your victory? How does it feel to have beaten National City’s resident hero?”

“I’m sure she tried her best,” Kara said, not sure what the protocol was for trash-talking your own alter-ego. “I can eat potstickers quickly, and she can fly and fight crime; it seems like a good distribution of abilities.”

“And how’s your stomach? Very full?”

Kara turned to look back at the table behind her where potstickers were still being consumed. “Why?” she asked, “Are there going to be leftovers?”

María laughed. “I’ll congratulate you again, but I think I should let you go. It looks like you have some fans who are eager to have you back. So once again, this was Kara Danvers, first place in the Potstickers Against Hunger challenge, and we’re CatCo media.” She switched the camera off and gestured towards the crowd. Kara turned to look and was almost run over by Lena, who had broken off from the crowd and sprinted over.

“Oof,” she said, “Careful, Lee, I’m all full of food and if you hug me too hard it might come out of my ears.”

Lena chuckled. “I’m very proud of you, Kara, even if it’s still a little horrifying how much you can put away.”

Kara stuck out her tongue. “You’re just jealous of my skills,” she teased.

“Jealous of your metabolism, maybe,” Lena said affectionately, putting a hand on Kara’s waist.

Kara smiled and melted into the kiss. Great friends, a belly full of delicious food, and the best girlfriend she could have asked for - it really couldn't get any better than this.

**Author's Note:**

> Endings are hard okay


End file.
